The present disclosure relates generally to surveillance systems and, more particularly, to methods and systems for use in inspecting marine vessels.
The number of vehicles, such as marine vessels, aircraft, and land vehicles, entering various ports exceeds several tens of millions annually. For example, in any major port, hundreds of utility boats, sailboats, and pleasure craft go unmonitored. It is possible that marine vessels may be used to conceal and/or smuggle unlawful goods across borders. Moreover, at least some known marine vessels, for example, may include at least one “parasitic” device positioned below the waterline for use in transporting unlawful goods.
One known method for inspecting incoming vehicles includes sonar inspection. Using sonar enables vehicles to be inspected quickly, but does not provide the resolution necessary to discern low profile parasitic devices. Moreover, sonar may also be impacted by environmental effects, such as reverberation, that occur while the sonar sweep is conducted. As such, a team of divers are typically used to visually inspect for parasitic devices. However, the port water beneath a marine vessel may be murky, have unpredictable currents, and may even be inhabited with marine wildlife, such as sharks, barracuda, and/or eels. As such, visually inspecting a vehicle with divers may be dangerous, tedious, and/or time-consuming.
Because of the large number of marine vessels and/or the limited number of divers, at least some known ports select only a fraction of the incoming vehicles for inspection. For example, a marine vessel may be targeted because it was previously in a flagged country. As such, at some ports, security monitoring may be sporadic and/or incomplete.